At this year’s Academy Awards, the Best Foreign Language Feature nominees had been whittled down to two by clear-eyed film fanatics. The winner was going to either be the French prison thriller “A Prophet” or Michael Haneke’s gorgeously photographed black-and-white pre-World War I drama “The White Ribbon.” So when the winner was announced, a movie called “The Secret in Their Eyes” from Argentina of all places, it seemed to be greeted with a collective “Huh?”
Well, we’re here to say that it absolutely deserved the Oscar win. It’s one of the most satisfying and emotionally rich thrillers (if occasionally ungainly) we’ve seen in a while.
The story is set in 1999, with extensive flashbacks to 1974. That’s when Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin), then a criminal court investigator usually involved in fraud or petty criminal cases, is provided with a whopper: he’s assigned to investigate a brutal rape and murder of a beautiful young woman. The crime affects him deeply. Not only does he take on an obsessive need to solve the case, even befriending the dead girl’s husband, a meek bank teller (Pablo Rago), but it shakes him up on an almost molecular level. It brought to mind the great tagline that graced the poster for David Fincher’s “Zodiac”: There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer.
Most of the investigation is told in lengthy flashbacks. The current storyline has Esposito writing a novel about the crime. On one hand its because retirement is getting to him, on another its because he still wants to solve the case (which was unsatisfactorily concluded), and on another its just an excuse to talk to Irene Menendez Hastings (Soledad Vallami), formerly his immediate superior and now a powerful attorney. It’s this relationship, between Hastings and Esposito, that forms the emotional base for the movie and gives us a clear through line between the two sections of the movie.
In 1974, Esposito is investigating the case with his partner, an indebted, drunk Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) who also happens to be a crack investigator when he puts his head on straight (he’s also fiercely loyal); in 1999, he’s ruffling feathers all over again as he visits with the principles from the case. If this back-and-forth seems kind of jarring, it is (you can tell the different time frames because Esposito’s beard changes from an inky black to salt-and-pepper). But eventually the movie settles into a distinctive groove, and the more knotty plot elements get to smooth out when you get the hang of it, and the film’s rhythm becomes apparent. There’s obviously a thriller element in there, but there are also moments of heightened melodrama, and a deeply romantic core. If there’s a criticism to be had with the movie it’s that it’s overstuffed and occasionally awkward. It can be like reading a James Ellroy novel and a harlequin romance at the same time. But still, for the most part, the movie puts you under its spell and it remains unquestionably gripping.
The centerpiece sequence of the movie, and one that will be talked about by film geeks until the end of fucking time, is a stakeout at a soccer game. Supposedly, the unbroken five minute take, which stars with an aerial view of the stadium and keeps pushing in until it’s a tight shot of our heroes, took three days to shoot, nine months to edit, and almost two years of pre-production planning. It’s a shot that will literally take your breath away, as you gasp by the sheer audacity of it. It also helps that the shot is followed by a foot chase through the stadium that brings to mind Hitchcock and De Palma (at his “Blow Out” prime).
Talking anymore about the plot specifics of “The Secret in Their Eyes” would be to rob it of its forever changing power. Also, talking about the two time frames would just confuse us all. There are a lot of twists in this movie, but they’re twists that are actually earned. The movie has a whole lot of humanity and is just as often funny and touching as it is deeply, grab-the-armrest gripping.
Juan Cose Campanella, the film’s co-writer and director, took some time off from features to work in American television, directing episodes of everything from medical thriller “House” to the zany comedy “30 Rock.” He brings that snappiness and tonal versatility of his television work to the movie, but his visual style is way more impressive than anything that could be contained on the small screen. As the thematic layers of the movie reveal themselves with the increasingly byzantine plot, and themes of redemption, sacrifice, and second-chances come to the forefront, the movie takes on an infinitely deeper resonance. Very seldom do domestic suspense films mean anything. Even rarer do you feel something. “The Secret in Their Eyes” does both, expertly. If all you know about it is that it won the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar this year, well, then that should be enough. It deserves it. It’s a movie that’s as artistically and thematically rich as it is entertaining. Now that is thrilling. [A-]
